336184 - [Meta] Freeze,Hang/Hung/Wait,Almost 100% CPU/Loop,Crash while viewing PDF (Adobe Reader/Acrobat plugin related issues)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

This is meta bug for Hang/hung,Freeze,Crash with PDF, Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat Reader. 
Product=Firefox,Component=General is set although not Firefox only bugs,
because PDF/Adobe (Acrobat) Reader related issue is mainly observed on Browser and Firefox is main stream of Browser of Mozilla family.

To all PDF,Adobe (Acrobat) Reader related bug reporters:
  Please write version number of Adobe (Acrobat) Reader/Plugin always.

Main purpose: To close many DUP bugs caused by Adobe (Acrobat) Reader plugin.
Initial pick up condition :
     1. Summary contains hang or hung or freeze or crash 
 AND 2. Summary contains PDF or Adobe or Acrobat
 AND 3. Reslution is --- (still open as of today)

 -ID/Resolution- --- Summary ---------------------------------------------------
 Bug 116398      Browser crashes clicking PDF link in Outlook
 Bug 140416      PDF Forms fails to load, crashes
 Bug 164996      doesn't recognize pdf attachments in messages from outlook web-
 Bug 172306      This URL (PDF document) hangs mozilla
 Bug 173061      hang if I open pdf pages,it hangs during switch over to other w
 Bug 219987      All pdfs freeze mozilla when trying to open using Acrobat 6.0
 Bug 244460      Mozilla sometimes crashes when opening Acrobat files in new tab
 Bug 252048      Browser hang on Go Back after viewing pdf
 Bug 253117      Slow-loading plugins (Acrobat 6, Java) cause Mozilla to freeze 
 Bug 261011      When open pdf file,and then colse it,Firefox hangs on.
 Bug 266698      firefox hangs if back button pushed while acrobat reader is sea
 Bug 274077      Adobe acrobat "hangs" when downloading pdf in FF only. Works in
 Bug 276394      All open Fifefox windows crash on closing Firefox embedded PDF 
 Bug 290682      Adobe Reader 7.0 Plugin Crashes Firefox (and Mozilla)
 Bug 305406      Freeze after print to PDF Writer
 Bug 307516      browser hangs if i click back on firefox after reading an pdf d
 Bug 310300      crash when I generate PDF using Adobe v7.0.3 Professional
 Bug 310308      Schubert|it PDF plugin crashes browser when viewing about windo
 Bug 311191      crash after you save a copy of a pdf file that has opened in a 
 Bug 313588      Print to PDF Filename Never Changes, First name all the time
 Bug 315926      When loading an Adobe Acrobat file, Firefox 1.5 silently quits 
 Bug 318081      No way to change the PDF helper application
 Bug 318381      Hangs when opening a PDF, sometimes
 Bug 318733      Closing PDF tab causes hang
 Bug 320971      Acrobat 6 Reader OLE Hosted by MfcEmbed Crashed in unloaded ADM
 Bug 323234      Navigating away from PDF crashes Firefox [@ _releaseobject]
 Bug 324636      When canceling a PDF file loading firefox freezes
 Bug 325472      Firefox crashes when I try to close a pdf file
 Bug 325588      A Stack Overflow (and crash) will be triggered embedding two or 
 Bug 325714      Fx changes window size of Acroread when opening it to display P
 Bug 325934      Complete system crash when attempting to open PDF
 Bug 327190      adobe crash
 Bug 329423      Crashes when I want to download a PDF
 Bug 330184      Acrobat Reader blocked by Firewall -> Seamonkey hangs up
 Bug 330527      Attaching a PDF file to outgoing e-mail in Gmail crashes browse
 Bug 332103      Firefox 1.5.0.1 hangs when i attempt to open a PDF file, clicki
 Bug 332288      Adobe Reader won't repaint (hangs) after parent element is hidd
 Bug 332800      Click link to .pdf file on particular financial website fails t
 Bug 334746      adobe acrobat crashes when i switch between two open pdfs
 -ID/Resolution- --- Summary ---------------------------------------------------

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Removed 164996, 313588, 318081 from "depends on:" becasue no hang/freeze/crash.
Sorry for my misoperation and spam.

Comment 2

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

To reporters of hang/freeze/crash relates to Adobe (Acrobat) Reader or PDF:
(Especially to who comments "me too" to already opened bug report)

 (1) Clearly describe version of Adobe (Acrobat) Reader's and it's plugin's
     version, since problem depends on them in many many cases.
   1) Adobe (Acrobat) Reader's version
      - Start Adobe (Acrobat) Reader as stand alone application,
        then see Help/About of Adobe (Acrobat) Reader.
   2) PDF plugin's version, and where plugin is loaded from
      1. Set plugin.expose_full_path=true thru about:config
      2. Enter "about:plugins" at URLbar of Firefox/Mozilla/Seamonkey, and
         check plugin version and loaded library for .pdf or application/pdf
      3. Reset plugin.expose_full_path(set to false) for security
 (2) If problem with Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0(.0), see next already closed bugs
     (WORKSFORME'ed. Resolved by 6.0.1 when MS Win.)
     Bug 204017(Crash) Bug 212067(Crash), Bug 214137(Hang) 
 (3) If problem with Adobe Reader 7.x, try one of nexts.
     A) Disable "Display PDF in Browser" of Adobe Reader's option settings
     B) If enabling of "Display PDF in Browser" is required,
        try disabling of other two options in "Web Browser Options".
         1. Go Edit/Environment and choose "Internet" option
         2. Check   option of (D) (Display PDF in Browser)
         3. Uncheck option of (A) (An option for "Optimize for Web browsing")
         4. Uncheck option of (S) (An option for "Download in background")
        B) is an workaround reported to Bugzilla Japan by some reporters
        including me. This is not perfect workaround, but some reporters say
        "This actually reduced possibilty of Hang/Freeze in his environment."      

Comment 3

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(away: 6/25-6/28)]

Thank you, WADA-san, but why this is the bug of 'Firefox'? And why the OS is 'all'? I think that these bugs may occur on SeaMonkey. we should move this to 'Core'.

And I think that we should separate this bug for each OSs, because the PDF plug-in and Gecko's plug-in code are not XP application.
# bug 140416, bug 310308 and bug 330527 are Mac
# bug 244460 and bug 290682 are Linux

The Japanese government and municipal offices uses PDF files for them publications on them sites, Mozilla Japan thinks that these bugs are very important for business users in Japan by this reason. I'm marking to 'jp-critical'.

I think that we need to contact to adobe.

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #3)
> why this is the bug of 'Firefox'?

My experience says that many many users(not developer/not QA people) usually doesn't search Core bug. And major victims of Adobe Reader plugin are Browser users. And main stream of Browser of Mozilla familiy is Firefox.
And I think Firefox user (especially Release build only user of Firefox) usually searchs Firefox bug only, although search is executed only when he or she recalls "Bugzilla has search feature" ;-)
And I believe many of Seamonkey users (can) search Firefox bug too, if Browser related issue.

This is the reason why I set Product=Firefox/Component=General.
(Please note that meta bug doesn't mean real "bug".)

> And I think that we should separate this bug for each OSs,
> because the PDF plug-in and Gecko's plug-in code are not XP application.

This meta bug's main objective is: 
 To reduce DUP bugs and "mee too" comments of "Hang/Crash while viewing PDF".
I think other meta bugs for each OS or each Adobe Reader version, which is for finding of cause of problem and findig solution of the problem, are required for developers and QA people.

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Search(Find a Specific Bug, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi) doesn't display this bug when Status=open/Product=Firefox/Words=pdf.
Changing back to Product=Firefox.

Comment 6

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Changing to Critical, so as to be displayed in Red.

Comment 7

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(away: 6/25-6/28)]

I see. I'll separate meta bugs for developers. Thanks for this listing-up.

Comment 8

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Adding already WORKSFORME'ed following two bugs in "depends on:", for ease of DUP closing of still-kept-open bugs for problem when 6.0 which is resolved by 6.0.1.
 Bug 204017 : Crash when 6.0(.0),  Bug 214137 : Hang when 6.0(.0)

Comment 9

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Following bugs(for 6.0.0) are removed from dependency tree, since they are closed as DUP of Bug 214137.
  Bug 252048, Bug 294456, Bug 261011, Bug 266698, Bug 311191, Bug 327190

Comment 10

[Enrico Pangan]

I can confirm this error.

os: ubuntu feisty (Ubuntu 7.04)
browser: firefox 2.0.0.3 (Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3)
plugin: flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.31 (Shockwave Flash 9.0 r31)

I think this is not a problem with flashplugin-nonfree because the same plugin works fine in Opera. I think it affects Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers.

This bug is discussed in greater detail here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/104470

Comment 11

[Bengt-Erik Soderstrom]

I'd like to comment as follows:

In the current trunk builds of Seamonkey (Linux FC6) the Adobe Reader plugin (nppdf.so) version 7.0.9  does not work but causes Seamonkey to hang upon loading a .pdf from within the browser.
Clicking Help->About->Plugins is showing the Acroreader plugin to be quite OK.

The plugin works fine in the current Seamonkey release 1.1.1, there it is working fine.

Comment 12

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI.
Following is TechNote by Adobe for co-existence of Adobe Acrobat & Adobe Reader.
> PDF pages don't appear in web browser window (Acrobat 7.0 and 3D,
> Adobe Reader 7.0-8.0, and Acrobat 8) 
  http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=328233

Comment 13

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #11)
> In the current trunk builds of Seamonkey (Linux FC6) the Adobe Reader plugin
> (nppdf.so) version 7.0.9  does not work but causes Seamonkey to hang upon
> loading a .pdf from within the browser.

Bug 368821 ? (report when Adobe Reader 8.0.0, but possibly applicable to 7.0.9) 

Comment 14

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI.
Disabling "Display PDF in Browser" option was/is (and probably will be) effective workaround of critical problem of Adobe Reader plugin in many many cases.

Comment 15

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I'm using Adobe Reader 8.0 LITE (it's an unofficial version made in 02/2007, without the useless plugins), and it works really really fine, i have never seen a crash or a problem with cpu usage, every pdf opens in firefox in a couple of seconds.

It should be advised as the default engine to open pdf in firefox cause it works fine and stable.

So, maybe crashes are caused by some reader plugin.

Comment 16

[Erik Perrohe]

WorksForMe

I am using Adobe PDF Reader 6.0.3 11/30/2004
with Firefox 2.0.x  on Windows XP sp2

And everything works fine.  
Although the slow speed of Adobe drives yah nuts, but that's not Firefox's fault.

Adobe did such a botched job with version 7 that I refused to upgrade.  Have not bothered to try version 8, version 6 works fine for what I need.

The only issue I have is that Adobe insists on grabbing the ctrl-keys (such as ctrl-d, ctrl-t) even when it's tab does not have the focus.  But if you put the focus on the location bar that works-around the problem.

Comment 17

[Olivier Vit (just a reporter)]

(In reply to comment #16)
> 
> The only issue I have is that Adobe insists on grabbing the ctrl-keys (such as
> ctrl-d, ctrl-t) even when it's tab does not have the focus.  But if you put the
> focus on the location bar that works-around the problem.
> 
This is bug 78414, just in case

Comment 18

[raymond shpeley]

Unchecking "Display PDF in Browser" of course stopped displaying pdf's in the browser. Rechecking it allowed pdf's. That's about it. The problem still exists.

For anyone else reporting a pdf problem. If the full pdf file loads 
and gets cached it will *no longer show the problem*. Make sure you clear the cache before retrying the file. You may think the problem is solved when it isn't.

Firefox 3.0
Adobe Reader 8.1.2
plugin: nppdf32.dll
pdf: http://ideas.aetn.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/3834/Teachscape_HY_catalog.pdf

Comment 19

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #18)
> If the full pdf file loads and gets cached it will *no longer show the problem*.
> Make sure you clear the cache before retrying the file.
> You may think the problem is solved when it isn't.
> Adobe Reader 8.1.2

To raymond shpeley:  

As you say, and as you say in Bug 274077 Comment #40 & Bug 274077 Comment #41, and as I wrote in Bug 274077 Comment #42, and as I wrote in Bug 429242 Comment #7, "PDF related hang/freeze/crash still remains even after Adobe Reader 8" seems to be limited in special situations.
I could find only following three reports of "PDF related hang/freeze/crash
even after Adobe Reader 8".
 1. Bug 383826(PDF download error) then Bug 368821(Crash),
    when test case of Bug 368821(very many IFRAMEs with PDF).
 2. Your report in comment #18 of this bug (== Bug 274077 Comment #40 case) 
    Hang when "scroll down the document before it finishes loading". 
 3. Bug 429242 : Hang when quick cancel after PDF link click.
(See dependency tree for this bug.)

raymond shpeley, could you please open separate bug for your case, for ease of problem analysis/tracking, with setting dependency to this bug, with detailed problem re-creation procedure & phenomena.

Comment 20

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI.
Following is helpful Web pages in PDF related trouble shooting.
(posted to Bug 391956 Comment #2)
(a) Problem of "Anything more than a few pages long, freezes firefox"
> "If the PDF file is 4 MB or larger (...)"
>   http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=328233&sliceId=2
(b) To verify your settings in Firefox and in Acrobat Reader:
>  Opening PDF files within Firefox
>   http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Opening+PDF+files+within+Firefox
>  Adobe Reader
>   http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Adobe+Reader
(c) Adobe's troubleshooting page
>   http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=328233&sliceId=2
(d) Other softwares capable of reading PDF documents outside Firefox
>  Foxit Reader 2.3
>   http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Comment 21

[Opensauce]

Firefox hangs when accessing these pdf documents:
http://www.uwex.edu/infosys/oraprod/documents/10Gfaq.pdf
http://www.oraclecoach.com/Docs/pdfs/Oracle_10g_Space_Management.pdf

Acrobat reader 8.1.1
Firefox V3.0
Windows XP Professional, Version 5.1, Service Pack 2
Plugin:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader\browser\nppdf32.dll

Comment 22

[Manfred H. Winter]

added bug 448102 to dependency list (Fx crashes when displaying PDF with Adobe Reader 9 plugin)

Adobe Reader 9.0 (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\Browser\nppdf32.dll, v9.0.0.332)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2pre) Gecko/2008072506 GranParadiso/3.0.2pre ID:2008072506
Vista32 SP1

Comment 23

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

According to Bug 448102 Comment #15, Adobe Reader 9's option names are as follows.
 (1) "Display PDF in Browser" 
 (2) "Allow speculative downloading in the background"
 (3) "Allow fast web view"

Comment 24

[Philip Chalmers]

Adobe's PDF pug-ins have always been a pain. Specifically: they assume they're reading from a hard rive and don't account for additional problems when loading from the WWW; they don't release focus while loading. Results (whihc I@ve ha din the last few days): browser unresponsive until PDF loading complete, so one can't use other tabs in the meantime; browser hangs if the plug-in hits a problem, e.g. network time-out. Since I was able to access the same PDFs later, IMO the root of the problems is that the Adobe plug-in is not WWW-aware. Since these problems have been around for years and fixing them would entail a major re-structure of the plug-in's code, I don't expect Adbode to fix them soon.  I suggest the only solution is for FF to put PDFs in a sandbox, possibly a sub-process, so that the browser remains responsive even if the plug-in freezes or misbehaves.

Comment 25

[Grzegorz Szyszlo]

I have the same problem with all FF versions, very old and new. When PDF is opened inside FF by Adobe Acrobat plugin, very often it hunging all FF application. At now I'm using FF 3.6.11 and fresh upgrade to 3.6.12 .
adobe plugin is:  "Adobe Acrobat 9.4.0.195" (Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape "9.4.0"), system is windows XP proffesional.
Problem occurs when sometimes is wrong with PDF file. PDF is loaded dynamically to browser, but very often loading is stopped. When I'm scrolling down to information that is not loaded (loading is stopped by error that I don't know), plugin hungs and it cause hung all FF browser (other tabs is opened).
It is strange, but when I press right mouse button and load "failed" PDF manually, it is opened properly.

For example try open many different PDF's from page:
http://www.tme.eu/pl/katalog/?idp=100&f_szukaj=led#search%3Dled%26page%3D5%2C20 , this page is in polish language. But you can search "PDF" chars and try it to open. PDF's usually are in english version.

Comment 26

[Grzegorz Szyszlo]

for addition you can use page (more PDF's):
http://www.tme.eu/pl/katalog/?idp=100&f_szukaj=led#id_category%3D100470%26cleanParameters%3D1
In the bottom is "paging bar",  1 | 2 | 3 | ........  etc for switching for next pages.

Comment 27

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #25)

Grzegorz Szyszlo, this bug is "META" bug for tracking of many PDF plugin related problems. This bug is never for specific problem/case.
Please open separate bug for your specific problem with clear/crisp problem description and with sufficiant data for diagnosis, after search bugzilla.mozilla.org well for already reported bug for same problem as yours, with setting this bug in "Blocks:" field.

Comment 28

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

I'm marking this bug as WONTFIX per bug #1269807.

For more information see - https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/